"Cat"echism

Prior to Opie and Miso, I was not a cat lover.

My previous experiences of domesticated felines were limited to sightings of their lounging or aloof sashays around the houses of friends I visited; or random streaks, saunters, on sidewalks and through the alleyways of my childhood; or worst of all, eerie yowls pealing through the neighborhood in the dark of night.

But during my grad school years, I had the good fortune to live with a tuxedo kitty named Miso and ginger tabby named Opie, both fur babies of my dear friends and housemates. Miso was elegant and enigmatic, with her neat white socks and bold chest set in sleek, soft obsidian. Opie was more approachable and didn't seem to judge the world like his sister did. His bright orange bulk was punctuated by a kinked stubby tail that followed him around like an exclamation point.

I was gifted with so much by their presence. Most often, it was the simple wonder of watching them being Cat. I was in school, reading and writing more than I ever had in my entire life, yet living with Opie and Miso brought sweet counterpoint and unexpected wisdom into the grind of graduate work, theological studies no less.

I wrote the following poem one year into sharing a home with them. Now, it's twenty years later, and I am finally settling into a lesson that they embodied so well which intrigued me the most.

They slept. A lot.

In astonishingly supple positions. Dead to the world.

With their nose or cheek tucked up against their ankles.

At my worst sleep-deprived moments writing for a deadline, I would pause to stare at their sleeping forms, flabbergasted and jealous. I didn't want to BE a cat, but there was something so enticing about their cat-ness: the freedom and ease in animal authenticity. Containing their own counsel and comfort. It was an aloneness and solitude that I did not yet know how to enjoy, because of all my conditioning and habits of helping, doing, seeking.

But those two cats -- one the moon, one the sun, in their coloring -- like all nature, they were great teachers of Being.

Opie especially was shameless with his sleeps, in frequency and everywhere-ness...

(not Opie, alas)

"Cat"echism

He used the tattered square of sun as a rug,

drawing his body across it like an orange

comma, a pause that carefully gathers

the longs stems of sleep spilling through the air.

It is too fine a bouquet for my fingers

heavy with keys and cares, pointing me

out the door to take on the day. But there

he was, my priest, gleaming like a penny

on the floor, a hairy host lifting up the sacrament

of forty winks. Seventy times seven he forgives

himself daily for all the squirrels, sparrows, spiders,

robins, crows, mice and flies that he fails

to kill. His penance is a stumbling block to my human

hurry. The days when I stop to rub my ear into his neck,

I can hear the red sea purring, parting -- the prowl and

pounce in him cut by a dry length of sabbath.

He is making exodus, but I take exit,

snapping down the stairs to school,

leaving that furball of faith to fold

himself into a womb that delivers him.